sculpt me a world without war
by Kuro49
Summary: Herc/Chuck. Chuck waits as Hercules Hansen carves a simple state of peace in the slow and methodical spins of a potter's wheel.


Because Max Martini has a BFA in painting and sculpture, this was _obviously_ the next sensible thing to do. (I know how to paint better than I know how to work a potter's wheel, but you can see the appeal in Herc making pottery, right?)

XXX

**sculpt me a world without war**

XXX

"What _is_ that?"

Chuck makes a face, the kind that Herc still has trouble distinguishing between concentration or a flat out sneer with a good amount of disgust thrown into the mix just because the kid can. And really, when it comes to his son, it easily could be either one. Still, Herc has no intention of finding out, not when the tension has just started to wear away from the base of his spine to the taut lines of corded muscles in his neck. Between the kills, and the imminent doom of staring down death in those war machines of theirs, Hercules Hansen carves a simple state of peace in the slow and methodical spins of a potter's wheel.

"Not everything is a phallic object, Chuck."

"Well," Chuck glances down between them, eyebrow raised at the way Herc's got his hands in the wet clay, thumb pressing across the top as he works out the friction. His fingers wrapping around the base with a light, insistent pressure as he drags up, the motion coming from his wrist. The slick slide is obscene in the wrong eyes, and Chuck's never admitted to anything but, "that looks like a dick to me."

Chuck grins as he drags a chair over to sit, front row seat to Herc's demonstrations. With his grey shirtsleeves rolled up pass his elbows, his freckles on display, Hercules Hansen is a sight to behold.

"Know what looks like the bigger dick to me right now?"

"Is that a rhetorical question, dad?" Herc glances up from beneath his lashes, just in time to see Chuck leaning back in his chair, grinning lazily at him as he swipes a candy red tongue across his lips with intent before spreading his thighs apart. Slow, sure.

(Like he's done this a thousand times before, like he can do this a thousand times more.)

"No." Herc rolls his eyes but he doesn't tell Chuck to stop, and that has always been more than adequate permission. "Not _that _either." He adds with a clay dirtied hand at the vicinity of Chuck's spread thighs, and the way his pants pull tight against the stretch of those legs.

Chuck huffs out a small breath. Herc doesn't look back up, doesn't need to, knows that might as well be Chuck's version of a wholehearted laugh that booms. (Herc smiles and that too is a soft, subtle thing.)

The room falls into silence, the kind that doesn't require the drift.

They're content.

In a waging war that has taken so much, there is little in the world that they do still have. And it is with a death grip that they hold on to each other. They probably won't ever admit it, not in words, but it's in the way Chuck sits still when Herc is leaning over the potter's table, wet clay in between his hands, muscle memories coming back to him from years ago. He dips his curved fingers into the centre and repeats the motion as it comes round and round beneath the insistent pressure of his palms.

It's not a ritual, but it does help.

Chuck falls asleep eventually, and while Herc can nudge the boy awake with a boot (there _is_ a perfectly good bed right there), he also knows that Chuck likes these moments in between just as much, where it is simple and the silence wraps comfortably around them both. He lets the boy sleep and turns back to the sculpture taking form, thumbing the ridges with a slow, sure swipe of a concrete, gray hand.

Telling time from the progress of the vessel on the wheel, Chuck blinks awake. He is quiet in ways he never is when he is out of the company of just his old man, and the question is soft in ways that they aren't. "Better?"

Herc gives him a simple nod, after a second of a thought, the knots of tension and the gritting stress having calmed into something more manageable.

"Good." Chuck says.

And then he is leaning over the potter's wheel to drag Herc into an easy kiss.

(If he gets a clay covered handprint over his cheek for the effort, it's well worth it when his father's lips curl into a resemblance of a smile against his own.)

XXX Kuro


End file.
